Lewis Hamilton's Eastern Promise

After taking second place to Verstappen In Malaysia last week, and the threat of really fast Ferraris to contend with, could Lewis Hamilton's mechanics bring his car up to race performance in Japan, to enable him to fight for a win? Read on to find out more.

Lewis Hamilton's Eastern Promise

After allowing Max Verstappen to overtake and claim first place in Malaysia last week, Lewis Hamilton conceded that Mercedes had work to do to get his car back to a competitive form. With tyre issues in the heat, and balance, as well as brakes that were overheating, he knew it was useless for him to defend, as he was not going to be able to win the race, his car was very simply off the pace.

With only one week between races, his Mercedes mechanics worked diligently to improve the car's performance, and Lewis explained exactly what he wanted them to do. Not many people know that Lewis keeps a little black book, in which he stores information about tyres, distances, and anything relating to his car, so that he can get the maximum performance from it.

Armed with this information , it allows him to work out each millimetre in which to improve, and maybe this attention to detail is why he has so many pole positions, some of them being, according to data, a time that is not possible.

After practice he declared that his car felt "normal" again, and he promised his fans he would do his utmost to qualify first. Vettel's pace looked equally strong, so it looked like it was going to be a titanic battle between the two multiple world champions.

Qualifying

In qualifying, Lewis dominated every section, his car was really performing well at the circuit in the cooler conditions, and although Vettel tried his utmost, the Ferrari did not appear to have the same pace. Lewis was 3 tenths ahead of Bottas, who qualified second, and then Vettel was another seven tenths behind in third.

The previous fastest time had been held by Schumaker, but when Lewis did his pole lap, he smashed it by one point seven seconds, setting a new one of his own. It was his 71st pole position, and 10th of this year, out of 15 races.When he was interviewed afterwards, he was jubilant to have achieved such a fast time, but cautious as to what sort of pace his car would have in the race. It was clear to see that the Ferrari, and a resurgent Red Bull were also going to be in contention.

Although Bottas qualified second, he had to have a gearbox change, and this meant he had a five place grid penalty, thus starting in seventh place. That would enable Vettel to move up to second, and Ricciardo to third.

Raceday

On race day the temperatures were higher, which was not really good for Mercedes. It is the hot conditions that cause the tyres to overheat and the brakes too. But undaunted by this, Lewis lined up on the grid with Vettel next to him. He got a good start, so did Verstappen, who came from behind Ricciardo, and overtook him, and shortly after , he also overtook Vettel.

It was clear to see that something was wrong with Vettel's car, as gradually he found himself down in eighth place, his car had no power. By lap four, he had retired, and the cause f his problem was a humble spark plug, which had obviously caused concern before the race, when the car was examined up on the grid.

Lewis managed to maintain a gap of about four seconds to Max for most of the race, but towards the end he encountered traffic, which enabled Max to catch up to less than a second. But Lewis was wise to this, and he quickly drove away, and then Max also got caught in the traffic. Alonso had been slow to let Lewis through, as he was driving his own race, later he was summoned to the stewards for ignoring blue flags, and given a penalty.

Bottas fought his way back to fourth from seventh, narrowly being beaten for a podium finish by Ricciardo. Lewis won by about one and a half seconds from Max. He was determined, after the last race, to maintain his first place, and the car behaved perfectly for him.

One cannot fail to feel sorry for Vettel, as he now sits fifty nine points behind Lewis, with four races to go. But remembering back to this time last year, the title should have gone to Lewis then with twelve pole positions and ten wins, but the racing gods were not with him, as he suffered multiple engine failures. This is all part of Formula One, and if anyone deserves a bit of luck, it's Lewis. Vettel still believes he can win, so I am praying that Lewis does not have any DNFs, he has worked so hard, and performed at an even higher level this year. Go Lewis, you can do it!My thanks to Wikipedia for the images and Youtube for the video